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Currently reading through One Flew Over The Cuckoos' Nest and Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! I'm only halfway finished both of them and already I feel the need to recommend them, on top of all the others I mentioned in the NoFap thread.

Well, I open my eyes and I see things. I've seen spirits moving through the walls. I've seen a vortex coming through the wall. I've seen amorphous little balls of light bouncing all around in the front yard through the window. I've seen giant bugs on the floor. I was in a hotel room in Amarillo, Texas, and all I remember is standing on the bed and seeing the whole wall in front of me filled with lights that were [makes popping sound] popping like popcorn out of the wall. Then I'll wake up and I go "Wow, I was standing on my bed and staring at this wall."

1984 is not a difficult book to interpret at all? I might be biased because we studied it last year in school though so it's drilled into my head.

Well, I open my eyes and I see things. I've seen spirits moving through the walls. I've seen a vortex coming through the wall. I've seen amorphous little balls of light bouncing all around in the front yard through the window. I've seen giant bugs on the floor. I was in a hotel room in Amarillo, Texas, and all I remember is standing on the bed and seeing the whole wall in front of me filled with lights that were [makes popping sound] popping like popcorn out of the wall. Then I'll wake up and I go "Wow, I was standing on my bed and staring at this wall."

The general consensus seems to be that the book is a critique of communism, which is absurd and completely false, or a critique of totalitarianism, which it sort of is I guess. If the book only consisted of only its first part that would be a reasonable takeaway but if you read through the chapters with Goldstein's book and the torture/conversion scenes and concluded that the only profound observation is that a totalitarian classist society a la Stalinist Russia blows cock then you inferred Animal Farm's message from a book three times its length.

The fundamental reason why viewing the book as a critique of any sort of political system makes no sense is because the society of Oceania is completely unlike any other sort of oligarchy that's previously existed, a fact alluded to multiple times by O'brien during his conversations with Winston (he literally says Oceania is different from communist russia). The book illustrates this by deliberately having long winded discussions about the mechanics of Oceanian society via Goldstein's book and the conversations towards the end. The proletariat of Oceania remains in complete ignorance, with their limited intelligence and middling frustration kept in check by war festivities, the lottery and proliferation of inconsequential media. In a swathe of people without any education who are kept meagerly pleased, it's gonna be rare that anyone would have the inclination or means to revolt, rarer still that they could gather a crowd of like minded individuals in a sea of apathy, especially when anyone who doesn't fall in line is eliminated. Above them you have the middle class (outer party) which literally alters history by pooling its resources into editing documentation, all the while remaining completely and utterly ignorant of the gravity of what they're doing. Anyone who is slightly perceptible is doomed by the constant surveillance and by virtue of the fact that the society positively reinforces reporting anyone at the remotest sign of suspicion. Atop the society is a ruling class that fervently believes in the cause of the war that it's fighting yet simultaneously (through doublethink) understands the war's futility but necessity as a means to control the rest of population. The role of doublethink as employed by the ruling class to machinate the structure of society and yet simultaneously be fully integrated into that structure eliminates the need for any sort of self-aware persons to keep society in check, which makes Oceanian society completely self enforcing - doublethink is the means by which the world in 1984 remains logically consistent because it plugs the biggest hole in any oligarchical society: the incompetence and empathy of the ruling class.

Across every point on the spectrum of Oceanian society there exist checkpoints to ensure that the hierarchy does not collapse. It is a world that is constructed for the sole purpose of ensuring its own survival - the continuous war that's designed to use up products of mass production at a rate that eliminates economic or technological progress, the insane amounts of manpower that's used to ensure that dissidents are not eliminated outright but are completely brainwashed into submission, the complete malleability of history (if documentation is changed and people force themselves to remain ignorant of historical occurrences then how can you ever be sure anything ever happened?), the proliferation of Newspeak (how can a revolt be possible if the word revolution cannot even be expressed?), 'the party is forever'. It completely squashes any notions of individuality because you cannot exist as an individual without partaking in the maintenance of the society's internal structure. It is a world at a standstill, devoid of any scientific, technological or artistic progress, moving forward to improve the means of fortifying its own ideals but otherwise completely stagnant. It is a self replicating machine. And that to me is the most fascinating and frightening thing about the world of 1984 and why people who dismiss it as a trite critique of a random political system are faggots.

yeah orwell was a socialist and it's pretty funny to think that he's critiquing communism when the thing he describes about the society with the most disdain is the condition of the group of people he explicitly calls proles.

yeah the parallels are striking - it was on my mind constantly as i was reading it. north korea is about as orweillan as any contemporary nation can get. unfortunately (or fortunately) unlike oceania it is not a self sufficient economy and it will eventually collapse as living conditions become intolerable.